State releases Incline bear

A bear runs from dogs used in aversion treatment on Monday morning near Tahoe Meadows.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife captured a black bear at Incline Village on Sunday morning. The bear, a 3-4-year old male, was released Monday morning at Tahoe Meadows, near the Mt. Rose Summit.

NDOW was attempting to trap a bear that had caused damage to a building in an attempt to reach the area underneath a structure, according to wildlife biologist Carl Lackey.

"I'm confident that this is not the bear we were looking for."

Lackey said the state handled the bear once before in the mountains east of the Tahoe Basin.

"We captured him in Little Valley during a research project in 2015 when he was about 2 years old," Lackey said. "We'll release him today and apply aversive conditioning, including the use of Karelian bear dogs. Hopefully this will dissuade him from coming back to urban areas."

Meanwhile, Lackey has a word of caution for Lake Tahoe residents, saying that bears are not ready to hibernate yet but will be searching out places where they could eventually hibernate.

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"People in the Lake Tahoe Basin need to make sure they secure crawl spaces in order to keep bears from getting underneath houses," he said. "They can do a lot of damage to a dwellings infrastructure if allowed access to crawl spaces."